Glassdoor: UK is third best place in Europe to look for work

Chris Papadopoullos was City A.M.'s economics reporter until February 2016.

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Chris Papadopoullos

The UK was third, behind Estonia and Norway (Source: Getty)

The UK is one of the top places in Europe for finding work, according to new research published this morning.

Online jobs site Glassdoor said that while the unemployment rate in countries such as Austria, Switzerland and Germany were lower than in the UK, the UK has one of the lowest proportions of temporary workers.

In the UK, only six per cent of those in work are on temporary contracts. Only Estonia has a lower rate, while Spain and the Netherlands have rates over 20 per cent.

The UK is also above the European average in terms of the proportion of workers who are working part-time who want to work full-time. It is just over four per cent in the UK – above France, Spain and Italy.

The UK also has a relatively low rate of youth unemployment. British youth unemployment is currently 17 per cent – near to pre-recession levels of around 15 per cent. This compares with dramatically high youth unemployment in Spain and Greece, where it is over 50 per cent.

Taking these labour market numbers into account, as well as general employment rates, Glass door places the UK in third place in Europe in terms of getting of job – behind Estonia and Norway. The unemployment is currently 5.2 per cent in the UK, the lowest since 2008.

“On the one hand, countries like the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland enjoy below average unemployment. By contrast, Greece, Spain and Portugal have continued to struggle with double-digit unemployment and slow economic growth—partly due to inflexible labour market regulations that have proven difficult to reform in recent years.”